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“No. I’ve been working on Spike’s weird-shit self-help book: Collecting the Undead.”
Damn and blast again.
I recalled a news item I had overheard on the tram home.
“Hey, do you know what Redmond van de Poste’s Address to the Nation is all about?”
“Rumor says it’s going to be about the stupidity surplus. Apparently his top advisers have come up with a plan that will deal with the excess in a manner that won’t damage economic interests and might actually generate new business opportunities.”
“He’ll top the ratings with that one—I only hope he doesn’t generate more stupidity. You know how stupidity tends to breed off itself. How are the girls?”
“They’re fine. I’m just playing Scrabble with Tuesday. Is it cheating for her to use Nextian Geometry to bridge two triple-word scores with a word of only six letters?”
“I suppose. Where’s Jenny?”
“She’s made a camp in the attic.”
“Again?”
Something niggled in my head once more. Something I was meant to do. “Land?”
“Yuh?”
“Nothing. I’ll get it.”
There was someone at the door, and whoever it was had knocked, rather than rung, which is always mildly ominous. I opened the door, and it was Friday, or at least it was the clean-cut, nongrunty version. He wasn’t alone either—he had two of his ChronoGuard friends with him, and they all looked a bit serious. Despite the dapper light blue ChronoGuard uniforms, they all looked too young to get drunk or vote, let alone do something as awesomely responsible as surf the timestream. It was like letting a twelve-year-old do your epidural.
“Hello, Sweetpea!” I said. “Are these your friends?”
“They’re colleagues,” said Friday in a pointed fashion. “We’re here on official business.”
“Goodness!” I said, attempting not to patronize him with motherly pride and failing spectacularly. “Would you all like a glass of milk and a cookie or something?”
But Friday, it seemed, wasn’t in much of a mood for milk—or a cookie.
“Not now, Mum. There’s only forty-eight hours of time left, and we still haven’t invented time travel.”
“Maybe you can’t,” I replied. “Maybe it’s impossible.”
“We used the technology to get here,” said Friday with impeccable logic, “so the possibility still exists, no matter how slight. We’ve got every available agent strung out across the timestream doing a fingertip search of all potential areas of discovery. Now, where is he?”
“Your father?”
“No, him. Friday—the other me.”
“Don’t you know? Isn’t this all ancient history?”
“Time is not as it should be. If it were, we’d have solved it all by now. So where is he?”
“Are you here to replace him?”
“No, we just want to talk.”
“He’s out practicing with his band.”
“He is not. Would it surprise you to learn that there was no band called the Gobshites?”
“Oh, no!” I said with a shudder. “He didn’t call it the Wankers after all, did he?”
